7 Best Screaming Frog Alternatives in 2026

Every price and limit below comes from the vendor's own pricing, feature or help pages, checked on 12 October 2026. US-dollar prices are used where the vendor shows them; some vendors also price in pounds or euros. They are 'as of October 2026'.

What you get from Screaming Frog today

The SEO Spider is desktop software for Windows, macOS, Ubuntu and Fedora. The free version crawls up to 500 URLs and leaves out scheduling, saved crawls, JavaScript rendering, crawl comparison, custom extraction and the Google Analytics, Search Console and PageSpeed integrations. A paid licence is $279 a user a year (£199 or €245), falling to $265 from 5 licences, $249 from 10 and $235 from 20, and removes the URL limit, subject to your machine's memory and storage. Log analysis is a separate product, the Log File Analyser, which is free for 1,000 log lines and £99 a year for a licence.

People look for alternatives for four reasons: they want findings explained in plain language for clients, they need a cloud crawler that runs without a laptop, they want log analysis in the same tool, or they want a cheaper or lifetime licence.

At a glance (as of October 2026)

The alternatives, one by one

Sitebulb: audits explained for people

Sitebulb's desktop Lite plan is $18 a month or $180 a year and audits up to 10,000 URLs. Pro is $42 a month or $425 a year per user, audits 500,000 URLs (up to 2 million on a capable machine), and adds scheduled audits and customised PDF reports; an extra Pro user is $11 a month. JavaScript crawling is on every plan, and it runs on Windows or Mac. Sitebulb Cloud starts at $125 a month (two users, 50,000 URLs a month) with recurring audits and no extra charge for JavaScript. The trial is 14 days, equivalent to Pro, without a card. Best for: agencies that hand audits to clients. Limit: Lite has no scheduling.

Netpeak Spider: the cheapest licence

Netpeak Spider is a desktop crawler for Windows and macOS. Pro is $20 a month, $193 a year, or $496 for a lifetime licence. The free plan crawls 500 URLs with 5 threads; Pro removes the URL limit, allows 200 threads and adds white-label reports with the SEO audit. JavaScript rendering is listed on both plans. There is a 3-day trial and a 14-day money-back guarantee. Best for: freelancers who want a Screaming Frog-style crawler with branded audit exports at a lower yearly cost. Limit: a 3-day trial is short for testing on a large client site.

SEO PowerSuite WebSite Auditor: part of a desktop suite

WebSite Auditor runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, executes JavaScript and has a built-in scheduler. On its own it is $149 a year (Professional) or $359 (Enterprise); the full SEO PowerSuite bundle with Rank Tracker, SEO SpyGlass and LinkAssistant is $349 a year on Professional and $599 on Enterprise. Professional prints reports with watermarks; Enterprise adds saving, emailing and scheduling reports, and white-label reports start there. The free edition audits 500 URLs, although one table on the same pricing page describes the free crawl differently. SEO PowerSuite's return policy says it does not give refunds, so use the free edition as the trial. Best for: agencies that want rank tracking, backlinks and audits on the desktop for one yearly fee. Limit: no refunds and annual billing only.

JetOctopus: cloud crawling plus logs

JetOctopus is a cloud crawler with log analysis built in. Growth is $349 a month billed annually ($459 billed quarterly) for 500,000 crawled URLs and 2 million log lines a month; Pro is $809 ($1,089) for 2 million URLs; Ultra $1,559 ($2,069) for 5 million. Every plan includes JavaScript rendering, unlimited projects and seats, direct log integration, an API and MCP access. The trial gives 7 days of full access for up to 10,000 URLs without a card. Best for: large sites where crawl budget and bot behaviour in logs matter. Limit: the price is far above a desktop licence.

Lumar: enterprise cloud platform

Lumar does not publish prices; its pricing page asks you to fill in a form for a quote or book a demo. Its product and help pages describe JavaScript rendering through its page rendering service, crawls scheduled hourly, daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly, and log data brought in through Splunk and Logz.io integrations or uploaded summaries. Best for: enterprise teams that want frequent scheduled cloud crawls of large sites. Limit: no public price, so you cannot compare it without a sales call.

Oncrawl: crawler and log analyzer, now part of BrightEdge

Oncrawl says it has been part of BrightEdge since 2022. Its public pricing page no longer loads and the site offers a demo; its terms name Basic, Core and Scale plans and say the Log Analyzer is available on Core and Scale only. Crawls are measured in tokens, with JavaScript rendering costing 3 tokens a URL against 1 for a standard crawl. Crawls can be scheduled and log ingestion automated. Best for: technical SEO teams that combine crawl and log data on large sites. Limit: quote-only pricing and token maths make costs hard to estimate in advance.

Suite crawlers: SE Ranking and Semrush

If you already pay for a suite, its cloud audit may cover small and mid-size sites. SE Ranking's Website Audit allows 250,000 pages a month on Core ($129 a month, $103.20 billed annually) with up to 250,000 per project, and 2 million a month on Growth ($279) with up to 1 million per project; the trial is 14 days without a card. Semrush includes Site Audit in its plans from $139 a month. Best for: agencies that want audits in the same login as rank tracking and reporting. Limit: suite crawlers cap pages per project and offer less configuration than a desktop crawler.

Pick by why you are leaving

Add the AI-crawler checks

Every crawler above checks whether search engines can reach and index pages. Few check what AI assistants can read: whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot are allowed in robots.txt and actually get the page, whether the main answer is in the server-rendered HTML rather than added by JavaScript, and whether llms.txt and structured data are present. You can test these with any crawler by switching the user agent and disabling JavaScript rendering, then comparing the two crawls.

Fenn runs these readiness checks on a site's main page (AI-crawler access, llms.txt, structured data, answer-first content, freshness and internal links) and turns each failure into a fix with a ready prompt for a developer or AI coding tool. It is not a site crawler and does not change the site itself, so it sits beside one of the tools above. Plans start at $29 a month, set up after a demo.

FAQ

Is there a free alternative to Screaming Frog?

Netpeak Spider and SEO PowerSuite WebSite Auditor both have free editions limited to 500 URLs, the same limit as Screaming Frog's free version. Sitebulb and JetOctopus offer free trials rather than free plans.

Is Sitebulb better than Screaming Frog?

They suit different users. Sitebulb explains each issue and produces customised PDF reports on Pro ($42 a month), which helps with clients; Screaming Frog is cheaper per year ($279) and highly configurable. Many agencies keep both.

Which SEO crawler includes log file analysis?

JetOctopus includes log analysis on every plan, Oncrawl on its Core and Scale plans, and Lumar takes log data through integrations. Screaming Frog sells the Log File Analyser separately (£99 a year).

Does Screaming Frog run on a Mac?

Yes. Screaming Frog offers downloads for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Ubuntu and Fedora.